The first detailed examination of the link between the "Chinese question" and the "Negro problem" in nineteenth-century America, this work forcefully and convincingly demonstrates that the anti-Chinese sentiment that led up to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is inseparable from the racial double standards applied by mainstream white society toward white and nonwhite groups during the same period. Najia Aarim-Heriot highlights striking similarities in the ways the Chinese and African American populations were disenfranchised during the mid-1800s, including nearly identical negative stereotypes, shrill rhetoric, and crippling exclusionary laws.